


Self-Loathing

by icewhisper



Series: Holiday Cheer & Tears [18]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 03:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17052683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: Sometimes, Len wished he’d never dug his way out of the timestream.





	Self-Loathing

**Author's Note:**

> Secondary warning for suicidal thoughts. No actual suicide attempt happens, but it can be considered a close call.

Sometimes, Len wished he’d never dug his way out of the timestream.

He’d tried so fucking hard. He’d died and floated through nothing and everything, fighting to try and pull himself back together. He’d wanted to go home. He’d wanted to go back to Mick. He’d wanted to fix the things he broke when he left Mick in the woods and when he’d died on him.

The timestream wanted him. It didn’t want to let go of him or the power that had seeped into the pieces of him that were left. He could feel the Oculus under his skin every second – the knowledge when the timeline was moving as it should and the unsettling feeling when it wasn’t. He knew it scared everybody. It scared him.

He’d wanted to go home so badly. Flashes of Mick and Lisa hadn’t been enough. The timestream had been tearing him apart and all he’d wanted was to go home, but it wasn’t the same when he got back. People had moved on. Life had moved on. Mick hadn’t needed him anymore – not by his side and not in his bed. He’d found the confidence to stand on his own in ways he hadn’t fully grasped before.

Maybe Len had been holding him back. Maybe Mick had been better off without him.

He thought of Lisa and the way she didn’t know what to say to him anymore. Of the Rogues and the way they looked to Mick instead of him.

Maybe they’d all been better off without him. What good was he to them, anyway? He couldn’t control the visions the Oculus gave him. His left arm was halfway to crippled with the burns he’d gotten when the wellspring detonated. He could still shoot with his right, but the cold gun was heavy and his aim still suffered if he tried to shoot one-handed. He was no good in the field and even less help when they tried to plan jobs. Some days, he still couldn’t find where past met present or present met future. The other day, he’d planned an entire heist around a bank that didn’t even exist anymore.

It wasn’t working.

_He_ wasn’t working.

\---

Mick was the one that found him, leaned back against the wall of the bathroom at two in the morning, and it was only because he almost tripped over the guy’s folded legs. He caught himself with a stumble, squinting against the light and without the patience to deal Len’s need to drape himself across the most inconvenient places like a damn cat. With the Rogues all but moving in, there were too many people living in the safehouse for Len to use their only bathroom as a hideaway to brood. It was on the tip of his tongue to say just that — because he was tired, a little hungover, and he’d like to pee in peace — but Len blinked up at him for a second and there was something in the look that made him stop.

“There’s something wrong with me,” Len said, his tone flat and with a hitch that pushed the sleepiness from Mick’s brain. He wasn’t even sure Len was talking to him as blue eyes dropped back down and he heard the sound of pills rattling in a bottle. He couldn’t see the label with the way Len’s hand was curled around it, but the cap was off.

“There’s twenty-seven pills and I know what they’d do. I can _see_ what happens if I took them. I still want to.” The words came out simply, like he was commenting on the weather, but Mick’s heart stuttered right before it dropped into his stomach and, shit, this wasn’t his area. For all his quirks, Len had always been the more stable one of the two of them.

“Len-”

“There’s something wrong with me,” Len said again and raised his eyes back up to meet Mick’s. “I think I need help.”

Mick could have told him that. If the guy was sitting on the floor and counting pills, he was well past the point that he needed help. The point was miles behind them and how the fuck had none of them realized shit had gotten this bad? The timestream had spit him out and he’d been a little off, but they’d never considered _this_. They’d retired from the Waverider and gone back to Central while the Rogues flocked back towards them like lost puppies, and just tried to move on with their lives.

Mick thought they’d been okay. He and Len were still in some kind of strange limbo on the marriage side of everything and they sleeping in different rooms, but he hadn’t considered…

He hefted Len to his feet and took the bottle from his hand. “Did you take any?”

Len shook his head slowly as his eyes slid back towards the white bottle. “No.”

He’d been thinking about it, though, and Mick didn’t want to think about for how long.

“I think I need to go to the hospital.”

“I know,” Mick said instead of the sarcastic response that wanted to come out. He wanted to snap, to tell Len that he should have _talked to him_ before shit got that bad in his head, but… They hadn’t been talking, not about the important stuff. They planned jobs and talked about their guns or how the Rogues were driving them crazy, but they didn’t talk about the things that had happened before. They avoided talking about the time Len was gone with the same kind of intensity they avoided talking about Mick’s time as Chronos. They pretended Len’s powers started and ended with the cold gun and ignored the way his eyes lit up blue when he was looking at something that hadn’t happened yet.

This wasn’t something they could fix with a present and a job.

Len wasn’t okay and they should have done something about it a long fucking time ago.

He dropped the bottle into the sink and let the pills spill out as he pulled Len against him. One hand cupped the back of his head as Len sagged against him and, fuck, Len not trying to pull away said a lot on its own.

“Come on,” he said, voice a little strained. “We’ll handle it.”

“I don’t know if I should have come back,” Len admitted. “Think it just made everything worse.”

“That a vision or your head?”

“Head,” he replied. “Everything changed while I was gone.”

Mick swallowed thickly. “I know,” he agreed as his thumb traced the line of Len’s jaw. “We’re gonna fix it.”

“Are we?” Len asked, bitter. His eyes flashed blue for a second.

“Yeah.” He didn’t move as Len’s fingers brushed against his chest. They touched the spot where their wedding rings hung from a chain under Mick’s shirt. “We’ll get there. First step’s calling Dr. Lu.”

“Now?”

“Yeah,” Mick said as he leaned in and pressed his lips to Len’s temple. “No more waiting.”

The End


End file.
